temple images of Vishnu, Durga, Radha, Lakshmi, Siva, Garuda, and others. The mendicant followers of Vishnu always carry about a wooden image of him two cubits high. All images of clay are thrown into the river after being worshipped, and have therefore to be renewed daily. They are generally two cubits high. The figures made of Karttikeya for his annual festival in Bengal are often twenty-seven feet high. An immense manu- facture of all these idols, and of sacrificial utensils, is carried on in Benares. The industry has sprung up naturally from the services of the numerous temples of this city, and has converted the pre- cinct of every temple into an ecclesiastical bazaar. It was in this way that the seats of those who sold doves for sacrifice, and the tables of the bankers [soukars in India] who exchanged unholy for holy coins, were gradually intruded into the outer court of the Temple at Jerusalem; and that the “booths of Bethany 99 rose beneath the green branches on the opposite slopes of the Mount of Olives. Miss Gordon Cumming, who has given a most graphic account of the temples, and temple services at Benares, says that it is impossible to walk through the bazaars of this city without recalling the descriptions of the vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem : of “ the cauldrons, pots and bowls ; the shovels, tlv snuffers, and the spoons, the censers, the basons, the lamps, the candlesticks, and all manner of things to be made either of gold, or of bright brass, which might be continually scoured. Here in the open sunlight are stalls heaped up with all sorts of brass work for the use of the worshippers. Incense burners and curious spoons, basons and lamps, pots and bowls, and a thousand other things of which we knew neither the name nor the use, but which the owners were continually scouring until they gleamed in the sun.” Amid these busy, noisy shops stands the red sandstone temple of Durga, elaborately carved from base to pinnacle, and alive with monkeys : and down the next street, another, dedicated to the same god- dess, is full of brilliant peacocks ; while above all else rise the glittering domes of the great golden temple of Siva, which
